PetMassage Paw Prints

We’re pleased to announce that we have created a Youtube channel to post videos about PetMassage. We’ve added our first video already. It’s fun, so watch it.

You can view it right here, or you can visit our page at Youtube. Either way, be sure and share it with your friends and don’t forget to come back and check for more videos in the near future.

Sincerely,
Jonathan Rudinger

About this video

We couldn’t resist the play on words of PetMassage for our first offering. When we first began our company in the late 1990′s we’d often get asked at dog shows, “PetMassage™? You can teach my dog to massage me?”

This video is our answer. Lola Ginabrigida, the little four year old boxer girl, loves to massage her people, Anastasia and Jonathan Rudinger. Really. Anastasia and Jonathan are both massage therapists for humans and keep a massage table at the ready in their home for weekly bodywork tune-ups. Lola watched them massaging each other with an intensity that was unusual for the happy-go-lucky pup. Lola, since she is a teaching assistant in the PetMassage workshops in Toledo, has been on the receiving end of many, many PetMassages over the last three years. She has been known to gently redirect students who are not following a particular sequence correctly and mischievously challenge those who aren’t demonstrating their calm-assertive body language. One day while she was watching Anastasia giving Jonathan a massage, she put it all together. She stood up on her hind legs, steadied herself with her forepaws on the table, and with the most delightfully serious expression on her face, started to knead, scratch, hold (her version of positional release) and lick Jonathan’s shoulder. Naturally, she got lots of praise for this. And now, every time she sees a massage going on, whether it’s at home or in the massage therapy room at the school, she needs to join in to help. The video shows Lola as she learns to PetMassage™ Anastasia. Lola required Anastasia to complete an intake form before her session and she even washes her paws (not shown) before proceeding with her version of PetMassage™. Please rest assured that, no matter how it looks, no humans were harmed during the making of this video. The red marks from Lola’s “Santa claws” were spontaneously resolved through the magic of “healing lick.”

I have a new suggestion re: the PetMassage for Kids™ program. Teach it to the kids at summer camps. A tangent to that suggestion is that there are many summer camps for adults and their dogs. This programs can be for their kids and the adults will learn a little bit of PetMassage™ too.

Dogs Kids PetMassage™ Course

Just why is this course so important? Children learn the skills of awareness, which will keep them safe as they see how an animal is responding to them. They learn compassion, taking them out of themselves as the center of the universe. They learn the power and healing effects of intentional touch. This socially appropriate touch honors the space, the body, and the emotional states of their dogs.

The PetMassage for Kids™ program teaches children the basic hands-on skills of canine massage and principles of dog handling safety. This course will reduce the incidence of dog bites in the U.S.

The book, DVD and audio CD, individually or as a three-part set is the perfect gift for any child who loves dogs. The Dogs Kids PetMassage book by itself, at only $16.95 is at a great price point. All three are only $45, plus we’ll include the official PetMassage patch, for FREE!

Order the entire PetMassage for Kids™ program. It includes the PetMassage: A Kids Guide to Massaging Dogs DVD, the book, Dogs Kids PetMassage, and the audio CD and the curricula. The PetMassage for Kids™ Curricula is sold separately. The Five Day plan is 3 hours per day and/or Ten week plan is one hour per week are great programs for after school, summer school, home school, camp, and scouts. One for $50, or purchase both for $75. Call 800-779-1001. Order online

We’ll even include a free official PetMassage patch so the kids can identify you as the expert. The package including one curriculum, and either the five day course or the ten week course, is only $95. If you would like both the curricula, the price, including the DVD, book and CD is only $120.

Thought you’d like to read a testimonial:

“This gentle book offers encouragement and instructions for things we can do right now, to help us dog owners during times of our greatest grief and despair. These are times when we too could benefit from a comforting hug, a wet nose and a compassionate floppy ear.”
-DP, Chicago

TRANSITIONS is the chronicle of the intuitive massage that I shared with Oskar, our boxer, the day before he was euthanized. During the session we developed a psychic connection in which we were able to share memories of a few of the inconsequential pleasant times we spent together. With my hand resting on various parts of his body, I would recall simple events such as noticing a stick on the sidewalk and watching Oskar walk over to nose it. As the impression of the memory filled my mind, Oskar twitched. I would like to believe that we were experiencing the psychically aware bonding synergy that allowed us to tie up loose emotional strands and bid each other our sincere “Adios, mi amigo,” or more correctly, “Hasta mañana, mi corazon.”

If you know anyone who is in the process of dealing with all the uncomfortable questions and emotions that come up while their dog’s transitioning from this plane to the next, get them this book. Order your copies for $20 each.

“Creating and Marketing Your Animal Massage Business”, by Jonathan Rudinger, has been rewritten, updated and will soon be available beautifully printed with perfect binding. Creating & Marketing Your Animal Massage Business will put you in the vanguard of the new animal health care vocation spreading around the world… that is, providing the service of holistic care for animals through the medium of massage.

Every culture since the dawn of time has developed and used some form of massage for purposes both therapeutic and pleasurable… for humans. Massage helps animals, too.

Dogs, cats, horses, ferrets, birds and reptiles all benefit from enhanced circulation, flexibility and body awareness. With massage, all animals can enjoy greater progress over-coming and correcting current physical issues. They can also connect with past issues that have resulted in behaviors associated with fear, abuse, and grieving.

Pet guardians are demanding more holistic forms of wellness care for their pets. Massage, as the cornerstone of hands-on holistic care, helps them maintain pet wellness, recover from traumas, and transition more easily from this life plane to the next… More and more, veterinarians see the value of massage and incorporate qualified animal massage practitioners in their pre- and post surgical rehabilitation programs.

In this book, Jonathan Rudinger, the founder of The PetMassage™ Training & Research Institute, expands upon the marketing course taught in the PetMassage™ workshops. This how-to-market book is unlike any other you’ve seen. It synthesizes concepts of T’ai Ch’i, Feng Shui, Ancient Folk Wisdom; current business strategies and PetMassage™ theory to create a useful and supportive course in developing the first stages of your animal massage business.

This book will become your personal cheerleader in your business creation.

These strokes are used to help break down connective tissue or adhesions, found within muscles, tendons and ligaments due to a direct injury accompanied by inflammation, like tendonitis. The therapist would use small circular motions making certain not to evoke an inflammatory response. Frictions are performed when tissue is in a relaxed neutral position and the thumb or fingers are used to compress the tissue over the [lesion] site. The pressure is increased and small back and forth movements are applied perpendicularly in the direction of the tissue fiber. No oil or lotion is used. (Source: Massage therapy terms and definitions from the ABMP website)

Application: friction is a way of increasing heat beneath the surface within the soft tissues. Press your fingers or palm gently yet firmly on the coat, over an adhesion and rub in tiny circles or across the muscle. The key is to not brush your hands across the coat. Keep solid contact and move the skin, fat, and fascia over the underlying tissues.

You know, of course, that Jonathan Rudinger, the president and director of PetMassage is also the founder and president of the IAAMB, International Association of Animal Massage and Bodywork. In the IAAMB arena, we have a goal of creating an active database/library of research papers. Please be not frightened or intimidated by the idea of doing a research project. We are not looking for PhD level dissertations. If you would like to do a small study, we’ll help you. It will be fun, easy and rewarding… three good things. We simply want to begin the process of documenting the effects and opportunities of animal massage and bodywork. Some of the things we may be believing and teaching may have their sources in myth, rather than science. We want to document these, as well. For example, what is the truth about massaging the ankles of pregnant people and animals? Your papers will be peer reviewed and discussed. Then, we can publish them in the IAAMB Journal, a publication that will come into existence when we have content for it. We are not quite there. Yet.

As a professional group, we are serious about growing and developing our profession, our credibility, and our market. So, we need this step. If you are an IAAMB member, you will soon be able to go on the IAAMB.org site to download a copy of a project that we created, with the help and guidance of the Touch Research Institute, led by Dr. Tiffany Field and her excellent team of researchers. The TRI is interested solely in doing research on the effects of touch and massage with humans. They wish us well on our ambitious goals of documenting the effects of touch and massage with animals. Please use my original PetMassage study as a template for your own. If you are not yet a member, join us today and begin contributing to our greater knowledge base.

It’s time to act on your dream: Learn PetMassage for Dogs.

Change your career path. Change your life path. Learn techniques that you will combine with the way you already connect with animals. With PetMassage you’ll astound and amaze all the dogs you touch. Do it. Now’s the time for this all important continuing vocational — personal development education. Call now to reserve your space in our workshops: 7-day Foundation, 7-day Advanced and 5-day PetMassage WaterWork.

Need more information? You have but to ask and we’ll snail mail your PetMassage Pet-a-log and Travel Information brochure, with all the information you’ll need to attend a workshop. Call us at 800-799-1001 or email .